Question 3 (opens 24 Sept.)

I agree with one of our participants post- (Dr. Paolo's following lines.....) "ICT is no magic, especially around the topic of farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing  documentation & dissemination of farmer innovations- Paolo"...

However, ICTs are having enormous potentail to document and share the local innovations...(eg. NIF's Honey bee network in India)....So for, most of the ICT initaitives put  limited importance to farmers' innovations becasue of the following challenges;

-digital documention of local innovations requires considerable  time and resources...

-familiarity with local situation and farmers innovations..

-need to validate the local innovations (which needs multidisciplinary expertness and strong support from the reserach institutions)

-it is always covenient and easy to design the ICT initiatives around the scientific information which is readily available at the reserach institutions/ private sector laboratories....

There are few (recent) initiatives such as (Media Lab Asia-MoC&IT, GoI and Central agricultural University's research project)  m4agriNEI (Development and Deployment of Mobile based Agro-advisory Services in North-East India) tries to document, validate, refine and share the local innovations by farmer to farmer communication and  using SMART phones...Here, we are selecting village youth (he/she sholud be a practicing farmer) for documenting and sharing farmers local innovations ...selected youth will be given continuous training and capacity building (to use ICT, document& share the local innovations by Mobile phones...) by the University Scientists and the project team....Project also proposes to share farmers innovations and experiences by creating farmer's voice and multimedia capsules ..(innovations to be documented with respective farmers voice/ video and same will be shared among other farmers....)

I am Lea Michalczik, Research and Extension Branch, FAO, Rome, Italy. By reading through the precedent discussions we realize that ICTs are becoming very important for generating knowledge, documentation, and sharing in farmer innovation.

Also in our work within the Office of Knowledge Exchange, Research and Extension, by working with TECA and Rural Radios, we constantly deal with different ICTs. It helps to document, save and share information by using different devices, not only the computer and internet, but also Videocamera, Photocamera, voice recording devices and mobile phones, for example.

ICTs can help to overcome geographical distances, especially in rural regions, through speeding up the information flow between various stakeholders including farmers. This is important as farmers can be connected more quickly and efficiently with advisory services, researchers or private companies to more directly share their needs and allow for collaboration and ultimately innovation.

ICTs, through their different mediums, offer various ways to document and share farmer innovations. Of course we should keep in mind the different directions a specific ICT device allows. A radio for example may reach huge masses but depending on how it is used it might not allow exchanges. If used as participatory radio it can also be used as an outlet for exchange.

For example, in several FAO field projects the Rural Radio activities are designed to fully support the farmer’s knowledge and information needs. If developed correctly, relying on a needs assessment surveys and participatory message design, the Rural Radio programming should offer contents demanded by the farmers, according to their languages and cultural values. Farmers may be invited to help develop scripts, call the radio for talk show programs and request different themes to be addressed. Furthermore, radio is also a less expensive and very diffuse medium to reach different audiences in the rural area increases the potential for effectiveness. Likewise, the Rural Radio stations may integrate other media, such as the Internet to address farmers’ questions which can then be shared on a large scale through the radio with those communities who have no direct access to the Internet.

An online forum gives the possibility to exchange but again depending on how it is used, it might leave out a part of the given audiences that is not able to connect for different reasons. Technologies and Practices for Small Agricultural Producers (TECA) is a platform that combines a knowledge repository with a tool for discussions. TECA has been developed by FAO to facilitate access to practical information that can benefit small producers around the world. Through the knowledge repository information on applied technologies and practices can be accessed from partner organizations agreeing to share their descriptions on TECA. An additional tool is the online forums, or Exchange Groups, where members can enquire a community of practitioners about a specific agricultural technology or practice, and at the same time share their own experiences with other members looking for support.

The question, if intermediaries are important is justified. It is also important to support ICTs that are directly for farmers themselves in order to make sure that the whole process is not based on dependency. The use of radios is widespread, particularly in the rural areas. But as efaminu pointed out, and we can all observe the mobile phone is a device that is of increased importance. We should definitely observe its progress as it is an ICTs that is used directly by the farmer without necessarily needing any intermediary. The mobile phone offers benefits, such as providing price and market information, fertilizer information, money transfer and more, but alone might not be sufficient for addressing more complex issues, conflict resolution and more.  

Thus, it is important to note that a variety of ICTs can make the farmer innovation process more diverse and accessible to everybody. Nevertheless, what really counts is the communication process behind it and the possibility to foster the convergence between community media (such as the rural radio) and the new ICTs. This is also the case of the application of and agricultural information system such as the TECA in connection with rural radio and other community media.

Talking about the topic of farmer innovation we warmly welcome you to TECA as we recently launched the Farmer Innovation Exchange Group (please see: http://teca.fao.org/group/farmer-innovation-exchange-group)!

ICT tools and technologies have facilitated better communication among small holder farmers and extensionists which has led to more collaborative relationships, created access to other key people in the value chain, formation of partnerships, where farmers can learn from each other so they can have better access to market information, technologies and practices etc. For instance Phones, emails and internet has hepled small holder farmers, processors, traders and others in the value chain to work and think collaboratively and not competitively.

The smart phones used by the Grameen foundation's community knowledge workers are being used to document indigenous technologies in Uganda which are shared on the TECA platform thereby helping other farmers to replicate or innovate based on what is already available. ICT platforms like TECA have created an enabling enviroment to document information but also allow subject matter specialists to solve issues as they happen in the field without them having to move.

ICT has helped some farmers make informed decision on how to improve production, solve problems (even marital) and get information on prices at the local market

This dialogue was posted on VERCON forum between some farmers from very distinct governorates in Egypt.

Farmer A: I have a mango orchard and noticed that there were a heavy fruiting in some trees. The strange thing is that, there were a "dead dog" in the middle of that spot. Is there any relations between the dog and this phenomena?

Farmer B: you know that bee do not like to cross match mangoes. The dead dog brought some flies, which caused the phenomena you noticed.

Farmer A: What do you suggest? How many dogs do I need to kill in my orchard?

Farmer C: you do not need any dogs, we used to ferment manure in piles spread in our orchard, this attract flies to do the bees job. so we have to birds with one stone. 

ICT facilitate quick and cost-effective knowledge generation, documentation and sharing. Here, I would like to share our experience from National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana, India where we identified that educating dairy farmers on quality milk production was a matter of great concern in view of the WTO regulations and consumer preferences. Hence, an Extension project was specially taken up to develop information dissemination packages on Clean Milk Production. A video film, folder and multimedia package consisting of e-book and multimedia film were developed and tested in field conditions to assess its utility in terms of knowledge gain by farmers. The video film attained maximum score followed by multimedia film, folder and then e-book. The video film on clean milk production is being used for educating dairy farmers on Clean Milk Production by milk co-operatives, training institutes and Veterinary Extension Departments of universities.

But, knowledge generation by farmers is also equally important. Few examples of the use of ICTs for documentation and sharing of farmer innovations, such as e-Arik and few attempts by MSSRF are available in India but it is still mostly predominated by print media.

ICT has many usages for agriculture; however there are many different dimensions of the scenario. And in a very real scenario ICT can instigate the process of knowledge generation itself. The ease of use, the accessibility, decreasing cost and many other factors are making ICT a popular medium in developing countries. So the farmers and the relevant stakeholder are getting interested slowly in exploring the potentials of using ICT for their livelihood not just for amusement purposes.

ICT helps to develop cumulative knowledge by making communications easier. Similarly it makes sharing easier through its reach. Now when all these things happens the farmers are getting a taste of knowledge bank and platforms for sharing information, ideas and concepts. From the field experiences we have seen that if farmers are well connected, higher numbers of problems are solved using the common knowledge, external intervention is required only when there is something new or different.

As a medium or communication platform or knowledge base, ICT is facilitating field innovation in an unprecedented manner.